Baldercashhttps://baldercash.com
My BlogWed, 23 Aug 2017 08:50:09 +0000en-UShourly1https://wordpress.org/?v=5.0.3Goal Resettinghttps://baldercash.com/?p=3495
https://baldercash.com/?p=3495#respondWed, 07 Jun 2017 16:01:13 +0000http://198.199.74.201/2017/06/07/goal-resetting/I’m not going to lie, the past week has been tough. I said this website would be a chronicle of my journey to financial independence and it still is. I’m 100% committed to documenting the steps towards the life I dream of. Saying that, I feel that I’ve suffered some significant setbacks in the past 7 days or so. I’ve really had to think about my current game plan and adjust a few elements accordingly. I’ve always known that there will be certain times throughout this journey where I would have to pivot, however I didn’t expect it to happen so soon.

So, what happened? I mentioned previously that I often work 12 hours days that are book-ended by a long commute at this point in my life. Well, my main goal recently has been to move out of this situation to have more time to focus on my other projects. I’ve actually been trying to get several projects off the ground simultaneously to see what flies.

The first business I’ve been working on is bringing a new education franchise to Thailand. Talks had been going on for around 6 months and we all believed that it was only a matter of time before we opened the first learning centre here. Long story short, the local investor backed out last week due to the overseas franchisor being inflexible on certain terms of the contract that would be necessary to do business here.

In addition to the education project, I also recently interviewed for a job teaching at a university. It was a pretty large step down in salary, but was also a huge reduction in number of working hours. That job would have allowed me to pay my mortgage, have enough to go to work and cover my food. Everything else – luxuries, savings, bIlls would have had to come from my online earnings – Upwork, Fiverr, this site, a few other sites I run etc. It wouldn’t have been comfortable at first, but at least I would have had time to work on building up my other streams of income.

Anyway, it wasn’t meant to be. On the same day that the education project fell through, I was informed that the university didn’t have the budget to hire me. They would be going for a less experienced candidate on a much lower salary.

That was a tough day! My main ways out of my current situation both disappeared within a few hours! I was quite frankly bereft of ideas.

Then a day later, I asked for some feedback on my site from someone with some experience of earning online. I guess in just a sucker for punishment. “It’s a really tough market segment to get into. Loads of people are doing this already. Best case scenario is you’re not going to make money for a year or two and even ten it’s not likely to be much.” is an approximate summary of the feedback I received.

Wow! Triple whammy in a few days. What to do? Fall into a ball and cry like a baby? Just the thought of continuing what I’m doing with no hope of getting out made me want to do exactly that.

I started looking around for something. Anything. Just get me out of here!!!

I applied for a few jobs out of reflex, but I wasn’t really qualified and don’t really want them. It just felt good to be doing something. Which is when I realised…

My whole focus so far has been “not this”. I’ve been doing things to run away from my current situation. The main problem with this, as a wise man once told me, is that “away” is not a direction.

Paradigm shift time. If I keep going away from things, it means I have no real destination. My goal has been financial independence, and it still is. But I’ve realized the goal can’t be not putting up with long hours, a crazy commute or insane business decisions. I need a more concrete and highly motivating goal to drive me forward.

So here goes.…. My old goal was financial independence to get away from a situation where I am currently unhappy. My new goal is financial independence to:

spend more time with my wife and cat

visit my young nieces in England more frequently

pay off my mortgage early and save trends of thousands of dollars

How am I going to do it? Well, I am still committed to this website. I’m also still working on my other website with my wife – https://chilliandlime.net focusing on vegetarian Thai food. I’m still doing some small investments. I also have a few other business ideas that are in different stages of discussions. I’m still looking for something that will allow me to have now time at home, but I’m absolutely not going to just jump into something because “it’s not this”. I’m also always up for other suggestions, so if you have any sugaring or ideas, please share in the comments.

Thank you for reading. This post ha been very cathartic for me.

]]>https://baldercash.com/?feed=rss2&p=34950Choosing a Domain Namehttps://baldercash.com/?p=3462
https://baldercash.com/?p=3462#respondSun, 28 May 2017 10:44:34 +0000https://baldercash.com/?p=3462Previously we looked at the key elements for setting up your website. Today’s topic is choosing a domain name. Choosing the right domain name for your website is essential. It is your online brand presence and your first impresssion for many prospective customers. It’s very easy to get your domain name wrong, so I have put together a few tips here on choosing the right domain name for your site.

Choosing a Domain Name

Here are some tips for choosing a good, memorable domain name.

Make it represent your brand and make it easy to remember. If possible, make it relevant to your business. If you own a cat grooming business called Cat Cuts, you should try registering catcuts.com or catcutsgrooming.com. This has two advantages – it makes your domain name easier to remember, and it also helps to create your brand image in people’s minds. In the example above, catcuts.com creates a much better image than catgroomers.com, for example.

Make it easy to type. Don’t use slang spellings of words, such as “u” for “you” or “m8” for “mate”. A good test for this is to tell your friends and family the domain name you’re thinking of and ask how they would spell it. If more than a couple spell it wrong, you should think about changing.

Make it easy to pronounce. Your satisfied customers will tell their friends about your website, so it must be easy to say for the customer and easy to hear for the friend. As above, you can test pronouncability with your family and friends. Write the idea for your domain name down and ask your friends and family to pronounce it. Again, if more than a couple pronounce it wrong, consider changing.

Keep it short. The shorter the domain, the easier it is to remember. According to a gaebler.com study, the top 5 domains all contain less than 6 characters. The longest domain name in the top 100 websites is 17 letters. It would probably cost you thousands or even tens of thousands of dollars to purchase the rights to a 6 letter domain, but if possible, try for a domain with 15 or fewer characters.

Avoid numbers and dashes. As we discussed above, your domain name must be easy to remember, easy to type, easy to pronouce and short. Adding a number might help by shortening a word, but generally makes it more difficult to remember. Don’t make people try to remember whether it was number 5 or the word five. Dashes make your domain name longer and also more difficult to type, so leave them out.

Bias towards .com. Over 75% of the internet uses the .com extension. This is because it’s what people are familiar with. There are many successful sites that use another extension, such as .net or .org, but your chances of success are higher with a .com.

Modify your name if necessary. If your business name is not available as a domain name, you can make some small adjustments to the domain, Try adding short prefixes – the if you’re the only one, eat at if you’re a restaurant etc. You could register “thepigeonpark.com” if “pigeonpark.com” isn’t available, “eatatdarenzo.com” if “darenzo.com” is already taken.

Use a domain name generator to help. Domain name generators are websites that help you to search for available domain names that are relevant to your business. Usually you simply enter your business name and a few keywords about what your business does and they will give examples of domain names that you could register. Some are better than others, but a few of my favourites are listed below:

Name Mesh – this one is my favourite. I have used it several times to get ideas on available domain names based on the keywords I was interested in.

Lean Domain Search – another good domain generator that I’ve used for ideas once or twice before.

NameChk – not quite the same as the other two, but you enter your desired domain name into NameChk and it will search whether it is available. It also checks all the major social media platforms for availability of the same name. Very useful for branding purposes when choosing a domain name.